Courses

Undergraduate required survey course exploring how religion, power, utopias, and community have shaped the cultural landscape through selected urban landscape typologies.

Junior-level studio focused on the design of medium-density housing, neighborhood parks, and playgrounds.

Vertical design workshops (junior to graduate level) focused on cultural heritage design.

Notable projects included:

Graduate seminar introducing theoretical frameworks and qualitative methodologies for researching cultural landscapes.

Introductory course covering sacred sites, urban form, forts, religious buildings, gardens, housing, and public spaces in South Asia.

Multidisciplinary course addressing environmental, social, and design challenges in Indian public spaces, emphasizing sustainable, culturally adaptive, and low-cost design.

The seminar introduces qualitative research methodology in studying the built environment. Ethnography as a research method is appropriate for design disciplines since it is wholistic, open-ended, and flexible. It is particularly suited for studying the relationship between people and places in terms of social and cultural constructs. It is an example of grounded research with findings applied towards designing for an inclusive and equitable future. Participating in the seminar will involve reading and discussion of seminal texts on places and place-making, doing field research in a subculture to understand how it is shaped and in turn shapes the built environment, and writing an ethnography of the subculture.

The heritage core of Vrindavan on the banks of the River Yamuna is visited annually by millions of pilgrims and is unable to cope with congestion and pollution. Historic buildings and sites are not protected with exception of five temples. The urban design studio aims to study the issues first hand in a site workshop and map the built and intangible heritage of the heritage core. Based on mapping, planning and design proposals will be developed to protect and develop heritage precincts, develop the riverfront and the parikrama path in as a blue-greenway in keeping with the archetypal image of riverfront kunjs, augment open spaces using the concept of constructive surgery to enhance chowks, widen streets, and introduce greenery, especially in congested areas, and improve connectivity and legibility in the urban core through streetscape improvements

The course is an introduction to landscape and landscape architecture through readings-based class discussions, field activities and a design project. The premise is that landscape is a way of seeing and is both process and product. Designing sustainable landscapes entails an understanding of ecological processes, social requirements, and cultural norms. The course objectives are to examine social-cultural-ecological constructs of the term landscape through discussion of assigned readings; apply the constructs in ‘reading’ existing landscapes; learn about the origins and mandates of landscape architecture as a profession; use site mapping as a design method; and develop design scenarios within an eco-cultural framework.

The course is a historic overview of the socio-cultural production of the built environment in South Asia. The built environment is interpreted as symbol of Identity, power, and community in case studies representing cultural eras from the past to the present. Building forms and spatial structures are analysed as shaped by cultural practices and social relationships. The course objectives are to analyse building typologies and their relationship to the urban context; understand evolution of architectural forms and spatial structures over time, their materiality, and their symbolic significance; and examine the built environment as settings of cultural practices

The course focuses on the architectural history of the Indian subcontinent beginning with the Harappan civilization to the end of the first millennium. It analyses building typologies and their formation as a result of social and cultural processes. Understand evolution of architectural forms and spatial structures over time and their symbolic significance